WASHINGTON — In a series of top-secret meetings last October, President Biden’s national security team presented grim intelligence that would soon trigger a fierce effort to prevent what could become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, was preparing to invade Ukraine, top intelligence and military officials told Mr. Biden. Gathering each morning in the Oval Office for the global threat assessment known as the President’s Daily Brief, they described satellite images of Russian forces methodically advancing toward Ukraine’s border.Not only did the United States have images of troops moving into position, it also had the Russian military’s plans for a campaign against Ukraine — elements of which had already begun. At one of the morning meetings, Mr. Biden dispatched William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, to Moscow with a message for Mr. Putin:We know what you’re planning to do.Stopping him would be a challenge. Many of America’s closest allies were skeptical that Mr. Putin — a master of disinformation — would actually invade. The use of U.S. military force against Russia was off the table, so the allies would have to threaten Mr. Putin with economic pain so severe it would also have consequences in Europe and the United States. And it was far from certain that Republicans in Congress would back whatever the administration did.On Monday, after delivering a grievance-filled speech attacking Ukraine’s sovereignty, Mr. Putin ordered troops into two Russia-backed separatist regions in the country. But it remains unclear how far, or quickly, the Russian military will advance. And by day’s end, the United States and its allies imposed only limited sanctions, reserving the full might of their response for moves that Mr. Putin might yet make.The White House acknowledged from the start that its campaign to stop Mr. Putin might not actually prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. But at the very least, White House officials say, Mr. Biden exposed Mr. Putin and his true intentions, which helped unite, at least for now, the at-times fractious NATO alliance.Over the course of three and a half months, Mr. Biden made three critical decisions about how to handle Russia’s provocations,according to interviews with more than a dozen senior administration officials and others who requested anonymity to discuss confidential meetings. Early on, the president approved a recommendation to share intelligence far more broadly with allies than was typical, officials said. The idea was to avoid disagreements about tough economic sanctions by ensuring that everyone knew what the United States knew about Mr. Putin’s actions.Mr. Biden also gave the green light for an unprecedented public information campaign against Mr. Putin. With the support of his top intelligence officials — and with a promise to protect the intelligence agencies’ “sources and methods” — the president allowed a wave of public releases aimed at preventing Mr. Putin from employing his usual denials to divide his adversaries.ImageA delivery of military equipment including Javelin missiles from the United States arriving last month outside of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesAnd when it became clear this year that Mr. Putin was continuing to build up forces at Ukraine’s border, the president approved sending Ukraine more weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and deploying more troops to other countries in Eastern Europe as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and to reassure nervous allies on NATO’s eastern flank.On Sunday morning, nearly four months after those meetings, Mr. Biden once again gathered his national security team.They had been right about Mr. Putin’s intentions. And they had managed to secure unity among allies and even Republicans behind sanctions. But all along, the decision about whether to go to war was Mr. Putin’s alone. Despite all of the efforts, it looked like war was inevitable.At the meeting on Sunday, the discussion shifted to new questions: whether to send more troops to NATO countries; how to support a Ukrainian resistance when Russia invades; how to deal with a flood of refugees; and how to manage the economic consequences of sanctions in Europe and the United States.“The risk for the United States is that the allies don’t stay together,” said Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department under President Barack Obama. “This crisis and this mode of a standoff with Russia is going to be around for months and years, not days and weeks.”Wooing Allies
Meetings with the leaders of America’s closest allies began days after the secret October briefings, during Mr. Biden’s trip toBy: Michael D. Shear, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt
Title: Wooing Allies, Publicizing Putin’s Plans: Inside Biden’s Race to Prevent War
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/us/politics/biden-strategy-putin-ukraine-war.html
Published Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2022 01:46:27 +0000
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